Automation is “the application of machines to tasks once performed by human beings, or
increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible”, Encyclopaedia Britannica [1].
The term automation itself was coined in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company. The idea of
automating processes and systems started many years earlier than this as part of the
agricultural and industrial revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. There is little
disputing that England was a major contributor to the Industrial Revolution and indeed was
the birth place of some prominent inventors, for example. in the area of textiles:
 James Hargreaves: Spinning Jenny
 Sir Richard Arkwright: Mechanical Spinning Machine
 Edmund Cartwright: Power Loom
Cartwright’s power loom was powered by a steam engine. At these early stages we see the
symbiotic relationships between automation, energy and power. The early forms of
automation can only largely be described as mechanisation, but the emergence of electrical
power systems in the late 19th century and the entry of electronic valves in the early 20th
century heralded the humble beginnings of modern automation. With electronic valves
came computers. One of the earliest computers was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Automatic Computer) built over two years between 1943 and 1946. It
occupied an area of 1000 square feet (about 93 square metres), had 18000 valves and
consumed 230 kW [2].
Before the deployment of computers in industrial automation, relays and RELAY LOGIC,
the wiring of circuits with relays to achieve automation tasks, was in common use. Today,
however, relay logic is far less used than computer-based, PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC,
which has followed the invention of the transistor, integrated circuits and microprocessors.